[Haxalot]

The Hack Forums Coding Contest:
Week 3

About

• The HFCC is a weekly coding contest hosted by myself for the Hack Forums community. You will have 3 days to solve 5 programming challenges I have randomly selected from Hackerrank. The contest will start at 4pm (GMT) every Friday, and end at 4pm (GMT) every Monday.
  
  The next thread detailing the next contest will be created every Monday, after the previous week's contest has finished.
  
  You should not use this thread to post solutions or provide hints until the contest is over. Anyone violating this rule will be barred from the current and all future contests I host.
  
  Previous weeks:
  • The Hack Forums Coding Contest - Week 1
    
  • The Hack Forums Coding Contest - Week 2
    

What's the Point?

• Coding challenges are a great way to improve upon your programming abilities. They encourage you to:
  • research data structures and algorithms
    
  • think critically and analytically about problems by breaking them down into smaller (and therefore simpler) sub problems
    
  • Be performance-conscious of the code you write
    
  
  This will help you to:
  • be able to apply a variety of data structures and algorithms to any problems you encounter when programming
    
  • improve your problem solving abilities, enabling you to tackle increasingly complex problems
    
  • learn new techniques (such as memoisation) and utilise more performant algorithms
    
  
  Another great advantage is that companies frequently test their candidates in interviews with similar challenges to what you will be solving in these contests. By practicing these problems, you are effectively preparing yourself for future interviews, giving you the best chance possible to secure a great job at a top company. All of the largest companies in the software industry (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc) will be looking for candidates who are great problem solvers, and the only way they can see if you're a great problem solver is by giving you programming challenges.
  
  So by entering these contests, you will ultimately become a better programmer and improve your employability prospects, all whilst having fun solving problems with other members here.
  

Leaderboard

1. Gorzoid (23)
   

I'm always open to hearing feedback if members here have any thoughts on the difficulty or number of the challenges presented, the length of the contest, or the starting times.

Sign Up and Get Involved!

[Haxalot]

For the interested, this starts tomorrow. Also, Week of Code 30 is currently running (4 out of 7 problems have been released thus far).

[RoyalCell]

How does the score calculate?

[Haxalot]

You get a set number of points for each challenge completed (it says the number of points on the challenges overview page and on the right-hand side of each challenge page). Some points are awarded for partial completion of a challenge (i.e. you only pass some of the test cases).

[Haxalot]

The contest has now finished. I'm happy to discuss any problems anyone had here.